G. Harrison's "Only A Northern Song": did the other Beatles really sabotage it (random psych noise)?

Don't know, but I love the psychedelic noises!

 

Forget it; he's rolling.

 

I am so happy I have this one solitary Beatles book. My head would be exploding if I had an entire library to randomly fact check.

 

Love the Yellow Sub Songtrack remix that George supervised.

 

While Only A Northern Song is definitely an interesting and psychedelic song (instrumentally), I think everyone is forgetting something. It was written as a scathing criticism of Dick James and his majority control of the Beatles publishing company, Northern Songs. Brian Epstein was still alive when the song was written and would have surely prevented it from being released on any studio album or single so as not to start any controversy with Dick James. Thus, it was revived two years later when tensions among the band and Dick James were at an all time high.

 

"doesn't really matter what clothes I wuhr or how I fuhr or if my huhr is brown..."

Is there really such an accent in Liverpool? Or is this something peculiar to Harrison, which he had made a phonetic system out of? Did he speak like that his whole life?

I have never heard anyone else employing this accent...

 

He accentuates it, true, but not that much

 

I thought the official story for this song was that it was written in five minutes because they needed another song for the film and they had the London Symphony Orchestra waiting in the studio.

 

This happens in old "let's put on a show" movies all the time, so it must be true!

 

?
It's a Liverpool accent. It's not employed it's how we speak.

 

If you want a cathedral, they've got one to spurr.

 

The other three don't speak like that.

What's wrong with my use of the word "employ" here? (I'm French; I may have used it wrongly.)

 

So if the late, great comedian George Carlin had come from Liverpool instead of Manhattan, his 1971 Hair Poem might have gone like this...

I'm awuhr some stuhr at my huhr.
In fact, to be fuhr,
Some really despuhr of my huhr.
But I don't cuhr,
Cause they're not awuhr,
Nor uhr they debonuhre.
In fact, they're just squuhr.

They see huhr down to thuhr,
Say, "Bewuhr" and go off on a tuhr!
I say, "No fuhr!"
A head that's buhr is really nowhuhr.
So be like a buhr, be fuhr with your huhr!
Show it you cuhr.
Wear it to thuhr.
Or to thuhr.
Or to thuhr, if you duhr!

My wife bought some huhr at a fuhr, to use as a spuhr.
Did I cuhr?
Au contruhre!
Spuhr huhr is fuhr!
In fact, huhr can be ruhr.
Fred Astuhr got no huhr,
Nor does a chuhr,
Nor nor a chocolate ecluhr,
And whuhr is the huhr on a puhr?
Nowhuhr, mon fruhr!

So now that I've shuhrd this affuhr of the huhr,
I'm going to repuhr to my luhr and use Nuhr, do you cuhr?

 

They sure do, you just don't notice it as much, George has the thickest accent.
"Employ" suggests it is a choice to use it- it isn't, it's how he speaks.

 

Ya mean it don't sound like that??

 

I tried to read Emerick's book too, but after slogging through so many pretty foolish diatribes about what a horrible person/musician George Harrison is/was, I just put the book aside and then actually threw it out, not even wanting to give it to the library. Basically, I came away wondering, what is Emerick's problem, anyway?

 

I don't know if anyone musicalizes it as much as Harrison seems to ... I've never heard his brothers speak except in the Dark Horse movie which I must see again. I mean Ringo comes from a similar background and though he says "I was so unferrr you were in a car crash and you lost ya huhr" he is usually a model of clarity. A lot of British actors, often asked in American interviews about their mastery of a faux American accent or about the difference between the king's english or a cockney accent will point out that there are a lot of British accents that Americans wouldn't even understand but we just don't encounter those as often. I'd say that George's scene in A Hard Day's Night just about qualifies as one of those!

 

OUCH! Unfortunately my copy met an unfortunate end as well but not by my design. I think the book had a lot of good info, but the co-writer had a job to do and that was to create an interesting narrative about Geoff and the Beatle years. I thought the early part of the book where he talks about working with Judy Garland or being a mastering engineer was great and I'd value it just for that stuff.. but I have to admit. I could have used with less carping about George ("ok ok.. we can HEAR the awkward guitar solos... we have ears.. WE bought the records... WE listen to them... maybe another take of Slow Down might have fixed that one! etc. ) but I'd have paid twice as much if he'd gone MEGA TECHIE NERD on the building of APPLE STUDIOS!!! I 'd have wanted technical drawings, pictures, diagrams, photos of Geoff standing near the Quad mastering equipment. And then he could have done ANOTHER Chapter on Ringo's attempt to renovate the studio for film soundtracking and done even MORE diagrams, drawings, and pictures. Now THAT would have made that book indispensable but noooooooo!!! We're stuck reading about Joey Molland's duplicity or Denny Laine's practical jokery. As George would have said... "I don't kuhr!!!"

 

This may be stating the obvious, but it seems people either really enjoy ragas and Indian music in general, or they cannot stand it. I'm grateful for this song because it exposed me to a whole genre of music I might not have ever discovered. It' out there in other "raga rock" songs, but it wouldn't have influenced me like this song did. When I saw Ravi and Anoushka a few years back, my attendance probably was rooted in Within You Without You.

 

The version on Anthology has the same drums, bass (I think), and organ as the final version. The only difference is the vocals, effects, and tape speed.

Addendum: The fact that the basic track continues for another minute (at least) after the vocal ends suggests they had a long ending planned and probably some kind of sound effects. "A Day in the Life" was also intended from the beginning to have that long dramatic ending.

 

I remember reading that Paul and John were taught to have more tame Liverpool accents. Is that true?

This is an interview with George's parents from 1961, if that's helpful (about 8 minutes in):

 

Yes, I actually enjoy Indian music and the Beatles were my first actual exposure to it in any form from what I can remember also.

 

I just wish we'd been given the undoctored "complete" version from February when it was still a contender for Pepper.

 

Thanks for that! (Can't be from anything PRE-1964 though, right?) We definitely hear George through his mother, including the pronunciation "fehrst" (first), which is the mirror image of the other one... I have too little time to play all of it, but that convinced me.

 

Oh yeah, that's right. I misread the description where it mentions 1961. My bad.